I still can smell the lingering scent of white orchids and roses in the air when I close my eyes and picture seeing you standing in your white tuxedo across that little wooden bridge where I would be joining you soon, to become your wife. You were so handsome, standing tall and proud, your hands clasped together in front of you. I remember giggling, thinking how you looked nervous, and how very out of character that was for you. A shuffle of your feet, you reached up to tug at your collar. I’m certain that even from the distance where I stood, I could hear you clear your throat slightly.

My dress was probably the most grown up and beautiful thing I had ever worn. I was only 18 years old, but I felt like a fully grown woman standing there waiting to walk to you. Looking back in the years that passed since then, I know I was nowhere near fully grown back then.

We did the deed, became husband and wife, and together, holding hands, we walked across the rickety little bridge that was as shaky and uncertain as our future, but knowing that as long as we walked it together, we would be okay.

And we were okay. In fact, we were better than that. We were good together. We laughed a lot. We loved a lot. We fought some, but it was always fun to make up, and it was always over little things. I loved our little apartment, and I added my own special touch to it, making it our home.

We lived and loved together for six months, before I suspected I might be pregnant. I knew you would be happy. You wanted a baby. I wasn’t sure I was ready for a child at that point, mostly nervous more than anything, but I was excited too. I couldn’t wait to tell you, but I wanted to be certain, so I put it off. I made a doctor’s appointment to find out for sure, keeping it a secret from you. I so wanted to surprise you like you see women do on the television or in movies.

I romanticized my telling you to the point I daydreamed about it constantly. It was a sweet daydream, and to be sure, it is a sweet memory now.

A month later, your plane lands in a state several states away from where we lived, and I am home waiting for your phone call to say you landed safely, but instead, get a phone call that would change my life forever.

You were gone.

I won’t go into the specifics about how you died, because I’m sure you already know all that. After all, you were there for it, weren’t you? I wonder what your final thoughts were. I wonder sometimes if I flashed in front of your eyes before you passed. Then I think how selfish that seems, and I try to put the thoughts out of my mind.

The one thing that I haven’t ever truly dealt with or gotten over, even so many years later, was that you never knew I was pregnant. I wonder sometimes if I had told you earlier if you would have made different choices, safer ones, taken a different path, acted in a different way. We can’t go back in time though, and I’ll never know for sure if you would have lived if I had just told you, but in my nightmares, when I beat myself up, I imagine that I could have saved your life if I’d only told you instead of playing some childish fantasy scene of romance in my mind.

Maybe that’s why I’m not a romantic person anymore. Maybe that’s why, even though I’m extremely sentimental, I disdain ordinary acts of romance. I never actually thought about that before, until right now, saying this to you.

Anyway, after you died, I lost the baby. Doctor said it was likely stress combined with physical complications, and he told me there really wasn’t anything I could have done differently. He assured me it wasn’t my fault, but it’s hard not to feel guilty in moments like those. I’ve dealt with that pain and moved on, but I can remember a time when the guilt was consuming and I used the pain to keep me moving forward.

If there is a life after death, then somewhere, I hope you know how much I loved you, still love you. I don’t know if we would still be married now if you had lived, but I’d like to think we would. I don’t know if the baby I carried for such a short time would have survived if you had lived, but I’d like to think that it would have. Sometimes, I close my eyes and picture us together, or little happy family.

Maybe I’m not quite as done with my romantic fantasizing as I thought, huh?

I feel you, sometimes. You come around me, and I feel it. Maybe I’m crazy, but I feel it. I know things, like, I know you approve of my new husband. He’s good to me and my kids, and I’m very happy. I love him with all my heart. The love he and I share is very different than the love you and I shared. With him, it’s deeper, more mature. With you, it was new and exciting; with him, it’s strong and passionate. I’d like to think it’s the type of love you and I would have shared today if you had lived and we had grown up together, loving each other.

It seems the more you approve of my life and choices, the less I feel you around, almost as though you have been guiding and protecting me all these years, and you back off when I don’t ‘need’ you. Maybe that’s more romantic fantasizing, but whether it’s true or not, it gave me comfort when I needed it, and that’s enough for me.

I don’t think of you quite as often as I used to, only once or twice per day now, instead of constantly like it once was. I still sometimes sigh when I smell the scent of the familiar cologne you wore or hear a voice similar to yours. I still stop in my tracks when I see wavy golden brown hair that looks like yours did, even though I know after all these years, with you being older than me, yours would likely be salt and pepper graying by now.

And in those lonely moments, the quiet, peaceful, lonely moments, sometimes I can still feel your arms wrap around me as though you’d never left my side. I close my eyes and wonder what you would look like if you were standing right in front of me today. I fantasize that you and our child are somewhere, together, with you telling him or her stories all about me and our brief time together on this earth in this plane of existence.

Then I shake my head and come back to reality, smile at what was, sniffle at what might have and could have been, and go find my husband and remind him how very much I love him, because the one thing I learned from your death is that nothing, absolutely nothing, ever lasts forever. Treasure it while you have it.

Anyway, my love, I just wanted to take some time to sit down and write to you, because it’s been so long since we’ve had one of our ‘talks’, and somehow writing to you makes me feel more connected. Can’t send it, but somehow, I know the intent floats out in energy through the universe and wherever the essence of who you are resides, I know you will feel my love.

It flows through my fingertips when I type to you now the same as it flowed through my fingertips when I touched your body so very long ago, back when the world was new, exciting and full of possibility–back when my world was you and you were my world. My world is so much larger now, but there, in the center, you still are an important part of who I am.

Excellent; warm emotions and cold reality delicately balanced in a fine piece of writing. I understand all too well the writer’s aversion to romance, because it seems that romance almost always ends tragically!

Well written and moving letter! I am so very sorry for your loss, but glad you found love again and are able to honor your first husband with your thoughts and words and your commitment to continue living your life. Thanks for sharing!